The North American Martyrs and God’s Superabundant Mercy, 29th Tuesday (I), October 19, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of the North American Martyrs
October 19, 2021
Rom 5:12.15.17-21, Ps 40, Lk 12:35-38

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Eight days into this 24 day feast on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans we have every second year, we get to an important clarification by St. Paul with regard to justification. Normally we can look at sin and forgiveness as more or less “loss and restoration,” that we squander our relationship with God and then get it back, and sometimes we think we get it back in somewhat a lesser stage, wounded; if we were to put it in monetary terms, we have a $100, we go bankrupt, and then God graciously restores us, but because of our wounds we really now only have $90. But St. Paul stresses something different today. He describes that God’s response to our sin will far surpass the depth of that sin, and not only our sin but the sins of the whole world. St. Paul stresses this superabundance: “If by that one person’s transgression the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.” “For if, by the transgression of the one, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” “Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We can’t focus on that “how much more” enough if we’re really going to understand how God responds to us. Jesus alludes to this very clearly in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger son who never really understood the Father’s love (just like the older son didn’t either), when he realizes he hit rock bottom and remembers that even the slaves in his father’s household were treated well, wants to come back and be treated like a slave (it’s the “lesser,” the “90” I mention above). But then the Father not only treats him as a beloved son by investing him with sandals that slaves never had but gives him things that far surpass what he had before: he puts a signet ring on his finger signifying he had power of attorney and trust, he kills the fattened calf for him (making the other brother jealous) and covered his pig-dung-infested clothes with the finest robe he had. This is a sign of his superabundance!
• At the Easter Vigil we sing of this “how much more” with words that at first glance might seem to border even on blasphemy. The deacon or priest, in the Easter Proclamation that could be called in a sense “The Gospel of Easter” or simply the Easter Kerygma, chants, “O happy Fault, that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” The theology behind calling any sin — Adam’s or ours — blessed is described in the prayer said at the Easter Vigil, on Christmas Day, and during the Offertory of the Mass when a drop of water is added to wine when we pray, “O God, who wonderfully created human nature and still more wonderfully redeemed it.” Human nature, created wonderfully by God, is left in an even more marvelous state after sin because of Christ’s work of redemption. The phrase, “O Felix Culpa,” “O Happy Fault,” is normally attributed to St. Augustine, but it’s not a direct quotation but a paraphrase. The converted saintly bishop of Hippo actually said, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” And it’s likely that he was influenced not only by his experience of the multitude of happy sins of his youth that eventually brought him such a great Redeemer and led him to write about it in his famous Confessions, but by the preaching of the saintly bishop who had helped bring him to conversion in Milan. St. Ambrose would often from different angles stress this theme, something that may have helped St. Augustine realize that God wanted to transform the manure of his past into fertilizer for new growth. “The Lord knew that Adam would fall and then be redeemed by Christ,” St. Ambrose declared. “Happy ruin, which has such a beautiful reparation!” (Commentary on Psalm 39, 20). Elsewhere he said, “We who have sinned more have gained more, because your grace [of mercy, Lord] makes us more blessed than our absence of fault does” (Commentary on Ps 37, 47). And in one of the Prefaces of the Ambrosian Liturgical rite, the priest sings to God, “You bent down over our wounds and healed us, giving us a medicine stronger than our afflictions, a mercy greater than our fault. In this way even sin, by virtue of your invincible love, served to elevate us to the divine life” (Sunday XVI per annum). So strong is this line of thought penetrating the Exultet, that later we sing, “Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed.” Were it not for Christ’s redemption, it would have been better for us never to have been born, just as it was for Judas. This is what St. Paul is talking about in today’s first reading, and this should give us hope. We’re living in a day in which sin abounds and therefore the death to which sin leads is all around us. But St. Paul tells us that it’s precisely at this time where God’s grace and life overflows all the more.
• In the Gospel today, we see not just this superabundant response of God but also how to receive it. In the Gospel, Jesus, speaking about his second coming but also about the way we’re supposed to await and receive him each day, says that if he finds us with loins girt and lamps lit, he will proceed to seat us at table and wait on us. The Master waits on the servant, the Creator humbles himself in love before his creature. This is what he did during the Last Supper and something he promises to do at the Eternal Wedding banquet. His response is so much greater than our receptivity! But he calls us to two things. First, to have our lamps lit like prudent virgins for his coming (Mt 25:1-13). We’re called to pray, to await him, to long for him, even in the second or third watch of the night. Second, he wants our loins girt, our tunics — or cassocks, albs or habits in other words — tucked into our belts as we would to work or to run. This is an indication that he wants to find us working in his vineyard and journeying to spread the faith and help others to await him and collaborate with him with lamps lit and loins girt.
• Today we celebrate some of the greatest examples of those who were ready with lamps lit and loins girt for the coming of the Lord, such that it strengthened them to face the fear of death with heroic faith, and who in their own lives showed something of the superabundant mercy of God. The eight Jesuits whom we call the North American Martyrs — Jesuit Saints René Goupil, Isaac Jogues, John de Lalande, Anthony Daniel, John de Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel — in the early 1600s, zealously brought the Gospel to New France, which encompassed most of eastern Canada as well as some of the areas of upstate New York. Practically speaking, it meant carrying the word of Jesus Christ to the native Americans — the Hurons, the Algonquins, the Mohawks, the Iroquois — who by the time the Jesuits arrived in 1625 had already earned a reputation for resisting missionaries and making them martyrs. St. Jean de Brébeuf was one of the first Jesuits to arrive in 1625 at the age of 31. Earlier, he had been rendered an invalid by tuberculosis, but having recovered his strength, he wanted to use the health he had to pass on the treasure of the faith. As soon as he arrived, he began to study the difficult Huron language. Over the course of three years of hard work, living alone among the Indians, with much suffering and constant danger, he did not gain a single convert. When England took over Canada in 1629, he was summoned back to France. It would have been easy for him to say he had paid his dues and to spend the rest of his life at the Jesuit institutions of Europe, but when France re-obtained title to the Canadian colonies four years later, he was on the first boat back. Christ’s superabundant mercy was overflowing in him such that he longed to return and strive to plant the seeds of the Gospel in tough soil. For 16 more years he labored about the Hurons, with his perilous adventures covered in detail in The Jesuit Relations. He would drag his canoe and bags over mountains and valleys for miles, going from location to location, wherever the Hurons were. His apostolate began to bear fruit, especially with the young. In 1649, the Iroquois attacked the village where he was stationed and he was sentenced to death. His death is about as gruesome as that of any missionary ever recorded. He was stripped naked and beaten with clubs on every part of their body. Then they cut off his hands, applied white-hot tomakawks to his armpits and groin, and fastened searing sword blades around his neck. Next, they covered him with bark soaked in pitch and resin and lit him on fire. During all of this, as the eyewitness account records in The Jesuit Relations, he continued to encourage and exhort the Christian converts around him to remain faithful. To stop his preaching, the savages then plugged up his mouth, tore off his lips, cut off his nose, and then, in mockery of baptism, put him in a tub of boiling water. They proceeded next to cut off his flesh, roast it and eat it in front of him. The final blow came when they sliced open his chest and ripped out his beating, valiant heart, so that they could drink his blood when it was still warm. Even naked, even stripped, beaten and flayed, his loins were still girt and lamp lit in expectation for the coming of the Lord.
• The missionary life and death of Isaac Jogues are similarly inspiring examples of what that faith looks like. He arrived in New France in 1636 at the age of 29. His hard work among the Hurons bore fruit; in 1637, he rejoiced to baptize 200. In 1642, the Iroquois captured him. He was beaten to the ground with clubs, and then had his hair, beard and nails torn away and forefingers bitten off. He was then made a slave. Eventually, he was rescued by the Dutch and sent back to France — stopping here in New York City on the way, becoming the first priest ever on record here in Manhattan — where he was greeted both with both pity and as a hero. Because he no longer had the fingers to hold the Sacred Host, he was technically incapable of celebrating Mass, until Pope Urban VIII gave him a special dispensation. “It would be unjust that a martyr for Christ,” Urban said, “should not drink the blood of Christ.” Despite all that he had suffered, however, when the opportunity came to return to New France in early 1644, he jumped at the chance. This was yet another example of God’s superabundant merciful love. He returned to Auriesville as a French Ambassador in a time where peace was being made between the French and the Mohawks, and was treated well. He left his mass kit there, however, for a return, and when some got sick in the village, they superstitiously thought it was because the kit was accursed. When he returned anew, he was ambushed by the Mohawks, who tomahawked him as he was entering the cabin for a meal. They cut off his head and placed it on a pole facing the direction from which he had come, as a warning to other missionaries.  But what the Mohawks were not planning on was that the blood of Jogues, Brébeuf and the six other North American martyrs would soften and fertilize the Indian soil to receive the Gospel. At the very place where Jogues was killed in Auriesvilles, New York, ten years later Saint Kateri Tekakwitha would be born. Even though they didn’t experience many conversions during their missionary work, the North American Martyrs’ heroic deaths, perseverance in the faith, and zeal for the salvation of their torturers would become renowned not just in the Christian world, but even among the sadistic executioners. When the next wave of courageous missionaries arrived, they would Christianize almost every tribe they encountered. The blood of the martyrs is indeed the seed of Christians. And we continue to grow in faith in the state that St. Isaac’s blood sanctified.
• When we look at their martyrdoms, though, we can often focus so much on their actions, their faith, their heroism to the point of death. But that’s not the way they looked at it. They looked at it as a gift. While we see in their missionary journeys God’s superabundant mercy for others, they saw it in their martyrdoms. Their sufferings, their torturous deaths, were considered even greater mercies, to help them grow in their capacity to await the Lord. This morning, in the lesson from the Office of Readings that the Church ponders on their feast, we pondered St. John de Brebeuf’s approach to martyrdom, which he looked at as a great grace. This is what he wrote in his diary: “For two days now I have experienced a great desire to be a martyr and to endure all the torments the martyrs suffered. Jesus, my Lord and Savior, what can I give you in return for all the favors you have first conferred on me? … I vow before your eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, before your most holy Mother and her most chaste spouse, before the angels, apostles and martyrs, before my blessed fathers Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier—in truth I vow to you, Jesus my Savior, that as far as I have the strength I will never fail to accept the grace of martyrdom, if some day you in your infinite mercy would offer it to me, your most unworthy servant. … On receiving the blow of death, I shall accept it from your hands with the fullest delight and joy of spirit. … May I die only for you, if you will grant me this grace, since you willingly died for me. Let me so live that you may grant me the gift of such a happy death. In this way, my God and Savior, I will take from your hand the cup of your sufferings and call on your name: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” He wanted to acknowledge Christ before others not just in life but in death, giving witness to the faith he was preaching in the power of the Resurrection and the meaning of our carrying the Cross and following Jesus all the way. The Prayer over the Gifts we will say today is particularly beautiful. “As we venerate the passion of your Martyrs John, Isaac and companions, grant that through this sacrifice, O Lord, we may proclaim worthily the Death of your Only Begotten Son, who not content with encouraging the Martyrs by word, strengthened them likewise by example.” The Lord’s own martyrdom, what he himself endured for us out of total trust in the Father’s providence, is the example for our own. Every time we enter into Holy Communion with him we are strengthens by his courage to follow his example. Every time we celebrate Mass the Holy Spirit comes down upon us so that we can leave proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord. Every time we receive Jesus, he strengthens us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit give witness with him. “When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim [his] death … until he comes again.”
• Today we have come here with lamps lit and loins girt and the Lord is going to have us here around his table where not only will he serve us but feed us with himself. He has wondrously created us and even more wondrously redeemed us and the Eucharist is the daily witness to his superabundant merciful love. The whole rest of the day is an opportunity to allow the superabundant gift of God we receive here to overflow, heading out to do his work and announce his Gospel of overflowing mercy with the zeal with which the North American Martyrs announced and enfleshed it and which Christ wills us to emulate.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download